Re: [Qemu-devel] system emulation of non-x86 targets

[Fabrice Bellard]

> As per subject, I'm interested in being able to boot and run an ARM 
> kernel and a full linux enviroment inside QEMU, primarily to aid in 
> (re-)porting Gentoo Linux to ARM. What would be required to
> modify/add to QEMU to support this?
>
> I have a rackmount netwinder, but it's external power supply has
> failed :-( and Netwinder Inc.  don't seem to respond to any of the
> voicemails I leave at their support phone #.

Two things need to be added:

1) ARM kernel level emulation. It includes MMU emulation and exceptions. 
If you know exactly what kind of ARM you want to emulate (StrongARM ?), 
it is not difficult to add, provided you have the ARM MMU documentation.

2) Device drivers: some ARM specific device drivers need to be added. 
The first task would be to find a working Linux ARM target which is 
close to a PC, so that you can reuse most of the QEMU devices (in 
particular IDE, serial, floppy and VGA). You need to add at least an IRQ 
controller and a timer.

Personnally I think it would be cool to have the fastest ARM system on 
Earth on your PC :-) If someone can work at the device drivers, I can 
improve the ARM emulation core to simulate MMU and kernel mode.

Fabrice.